


Elpis

by Ori_Cat



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: "It" used as a pronoun, "They" used as a pronoun, Gen, Torture, minor metaphoric suicidality, the odd grammar is by design, turns out I have promethean feelings I was surprised too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-05-21 16:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: And when they freed me too there entered into pain release-from-pain, so now I-we-they may bring it to you.Of the breaking of chains and the spirit of humanity.





	Elpis

Pain. Pain/agony/desolation, and that is everything and all, the pain and the existence are one, and anything that might be otherwise blinks out overwhelmed as soon as it may appear. This is a time without time and a space without space and so there is nothing but the pain, uniform and fathomless and and and - 

(Dissolution. Wiping away. Recrystallization.) 

It does not stab or burn or crush, does not ache or arc, for all those are subsets and this is the root pain, the one from which they all descend, and at the very centre of it and every other place within is it, who when it can think knows itself the object of the torment, bound and forsaken forever/everywhere. 

It breaks. It breaks and reforms and breaks again, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and - 

It has given up struggling, given up trying to scream, there is not a reason. It is drowned within it like within the vastness of all the spaces that exist, and it is consumed, knows itself consumed but cannot be destroyed/shattered/undone. All that it may have been before dissolves in the solvent of the pain to leave only that yearning, unfulfillable annihilation, a great deep mass of despair. 

It breaks and breaks and breaks, into infinity, unending. 

  
  
  
  


There is light. There is light and there is a being and the light and the being are one, and the being is where before they were not. 

_Hush,_ the being says, and comes towards it. The being shares form, form like it, and the being reaches out to lay hands upon it, and a sense very exothermic pours from the being. It has not known exothermicity for a long time. That shall be a different pain, and it does not know whether to be afraid or grateful. Both may have been homogenized in it some time ago. 

But the being’s hands take its face, hold its head still, and in the wake of the touch comes not a burn but _nothing,_ a place that is not pain, and it cannot help but cry out with the shock of it. It is almost worse than the agony, for being unfamiliar. 

_I-we-they may help you,_ the being says, _if you will it._

Help. Help is dull and grey; it does not know help. Help does not give when it pushes at it. It does not understand help. 

_Relieve,_ I-we-they clarifies. _A reforming that is not followed by a breaking._ The ease drips down from their hands, runs from its cheeks down its neck, arms, spine, and it relaxes, shuddering, for the first time in an asymptotically endless period. 

_Don’t know,_ it answers, and the feel of it is pathetic and small and wretched. It would like to weep, and perhaps it does, for something heavy slides over its face, something all its own, detached from my-our-their touch. 

I-we-they sighs, moves a thumb to rub away the weeping. _What do you will, then?_

_N-not,_ it begs. An absence of everything. Or at least an absence of the pain, and if everything must go with the pain having been drowned and run through and through with the pain it would count that no great loss, it would count it worth it/fair/the better. 

I-we-they understands, it knows very surely that they understand. Warmth radiates from them; they are a fire. _That I cannot give,_ it says, _it is not of me. But I-we-they have a place/beings for you, somewhere/thing you may indwell. Grant you allowance/will. That will give you dampening, give you much other than pain._

This is a thing it is very slow to comprehend - how much other-than-pain how been sleeted away over the time that is not time, since the before. _What of them?_ it asks. For there is fear in the unknown, just as much as in the known though it be terrible. 

_They are/have been one and a half hundred hundred hundred hundred hundred,_ I-we-they says. _They live only a small distance after ice and even less above fire and even less below nothing. What they are is sugar_ \- it senses it as they speak, sweet and pleasurable - _and water_ \- a rush of calm-soothing-renewal - _clay_ \- clinging and dryness and grit - _and breath_ \- a doing feeling, a feeling of is-ness (it thinks it might have had an is-ness of its own too, before. The is-ness seems fairly familiar) - _and a few other things too. If it is not you want,_ it says, _they are very skilled at not._

Its sight is lifted enough to see that there is a patch on I-we-they that is not fire, is dark and dull and wounded, low on the right side. I-we-they catches its regard and lifts a hand off its cheek to touch the injury. _Ah,_ I-we-they says. _You see. Pain._ Their fingers are dark with some substance half-blood half-ash when they lift them away, and it shivers as the marked hand is laid back upon its cheek. _Pain for me as well. But I am released. And when they freed me too there entered into pain release-from-pain, so now I-we-they may bring it to you._

_Why?_ it asks. Why can they save it when there is nothing else known that can/could? (Or would/will? There is no difference.) 

The response is satisfied. _Ah. That is because of those few other things. Or, one in particular._ I-we-they leans forward over it, pushes lips warm and exothermic to its forehead. A warm-ecstatic-beautiful feeling pours from the touch and hybridizes with the pain, turning it to something unfamiliar. But better. So many times better. _They call it hope._


End file.
